The Long Dry
A year with the ranchers of the plateau, waiting for rain.
A Year Waiting For Rain
Three families ranch the high plateau where it has not rained properly in four years. We went back eight times over a year, a crew of three in one car, and filmed what waiting does to people.
Fourteen shoot days became four hundred hours of rushes and eight weeks in the edit. The film premiered on the Field Notes Channel and screens with a conversation with the families wherever it travels.
Credits
- ClientField Notes Channel
- TypeDocumentary
- DirectorElias Brandt
- CinematographyTheo Marchetti
- EditorLucia Reyes
- ColouristNoor Haddad
- CameraFull-frame documentary camera
- Format1.85:1
- Running Time52 min
- Shoot14 days
- LocationMonument Valley, Utah
- Year2026
Five Chapters
The film follows the year in the order it happened, from the dry spring to the first storm.
- 00:00:00:00
The Dry Spring
The tanks, the auction and a herd half the size it was.
- 00:09:42:12
Summer Water
Hauling water up the mesa, twice a day, in a borrowed truck.
- 00:21:05:08
The Fire Season
Smoke from three states away, and the night it came close.
- 00:34:18:20
The Winter Count
What is left, what is sold and who stays on the plateau.
- 00:44:51:02
The First Storm
Rain, at last, and nobody quite believing it.
From The Plateau
